Time and Other Flaws of Human Perception
by Tessa Crowley
Summary: When Scorpius is thirteen, time stops making sense. The ensuing seven years show him that nothing else does, either. Love triangle, ASP/SM/HP. Major character death.
1. Krakow, 2026

There is no fanfare. No press, no onlookers, no protestors on either side of the debate. There's only the mighty, cavernous entryway of the Polish Magical Senate, empty and echoing with their footsteps as they first cross into it.

At once, Scorpius's guards are on edge. This is not how they were expecting things to go. Surprise is the enemy of security for men like him.

"Where is everyone?" one of his guards asks, her voice tight. Another guard mutters something into his palm, alerting someone, somewhere, likely in London, about this development.

Scorpius doesn't answer. His guards have grown accustomed to his silence and speak only amongst themselves. He can feel a dull thud against his ribs and realizes that he is frightened. It's been so long since he's been frightened of anything that the feeling is almost refreshing.

"We should scout the perimeter," says one guard to the other. "I don't like this. What sort of peace summit happens in an empty building?"

"Go to the south wing," Scorpius says, though his voice cracks at first from disuse. His guards look back at him, surprised.

"Sir?" says the guard on the left to him. "Your Sight?"

Scorpius doesn't need to say yes or no. He has seen this in his head a thousand ways, without a thousand subtle changes, in a thousand subtle iterations. They're already sure that his command is Prophecy, and they're not ready to doubt him. They do not need to know that there's nothing in the south wing.

"Chalmers, stay with him," says the left guard to the right. "You two, with me."

And like that, three of his guards go hurrying toward the south wing, leaving him and the most unfortunate Edgar Chalmers alone. Scorpius starts off slowly toward the Senate Floor, where he was originally meant to go. He walks slowly, hands shaking almost imperceptibly. He stares at Chalmers as they walk.

"Your baby girl will be born next week," Scorpius says to him.

Chalmers looks back at him, startled.

"Seven pounds, two ounces."

"Sir?"

"Perfectly healthy, her and her mother both."

Chalmers doesn't seem to know what to say. It's as though he wants to smile, but given the sudden danger, he simply can't.

"She'll be lovely," Scorpius says, voice fading from his throat. "Lovely and brilliant. She'll have a tremendous mechanical mind, she'll build things we can't even dream of."

"Sir, I don't…"

"I just wanted you to know that, Chalmers," Scorpius continues, voice hitching. "I wanted you to know that."

The doors to the Senate floor swing open when he approaches. The Senate is also empty, of course it is. Scorpius heaves his heavy formal robes up a the knee and ascends the long staircase toward the center of the room.

"Sir, this isn't good, please stay close," Chalmers says. He is on high alert. He is also thinking about his baby-girl-yet-to-be, whose name he'll never know, wondering darkly and dreadfully in the back of his mind why the Grand Seer chose this moment to tell him it, wondering if he'll ever hold her.

Scorpius shuts his eyes, and precisely three heartbeats later, the grand fireplace on the far side of the room roars to life.

" _Scorpius!_ "

It's Harry's voice, of course. He's seen every iteration of his conversation already.

"Scorpius, get out of there now!"

"Minister Potter!" It's Chalmers, across the room, spinning on his heel. "What's—?"

"It's too late," Scorpius says, to Chalmers or Harry, it doesn't matter.

"Scorpius, the separatists are planning an attack on the Senate, you have to leave now, before—"

"Did you not hear me?" Scorpius says, with more volume that only amplifies the waver in his voice. "Harry, it's too late. They've already sealed the magical front doors."

There's a beat of silence. "You've seen—?"

"He'll forgive you, you know," Scorpius tells him. "One day. Just be patient."

Alarm rises in Harry's voice. "Scorpius, Jesus, why did you never—"

"Grief is a funny thing that way," Scorpius continues, as he hears the double doors clatter open again, hears Chalmers's scream and the rip of his flesh. "It has its way of erasing grudges and sealing wounds."

" _Scorpius, why did you never mention?_ " Harry is hysterical. "I _told_ you, I told you back in London—"

The fire goes out, magically extinguished by a wand on the far side of the room.

"Grand Seer!"

The thick Polish slant is nearly impenetrable. Scorpius turns around and looks at them, huddled and snarling, hunched, wands out, teeth bared.

"Good evening," Scorpius says, as neutrally as he can manage, doing his best not to look at the corpse of Edgar Chalmers at their feet.

"Where's the rest of your guard?"

"Gone already," he answers.

The one who had addressed him, the stocky man in the front with the gnarled wand, spits on the polished marble floor. "He's lying," says the woman next to him. "He's a Seer, he's got something in store."

"I assure you I do not," Scorpius says. "You know the lengths you've gone to. Did you think I didn't? Did you think for a second that I didn't know what was going to happen here?"

"Forgive me my skepticism," says the first man with the gnarled wand, stalking forward dangerously. Scorpius remains perfectly stationary.

"They'll catch you," Scorpius tells him, knowing full well that there is never a timeline in which he can talk Igor Zielinski out of his furious, separatist rage, but saying it nonetheless. "They'll kill you, but you'll get what you want."

The corner of his eye twitches.

"Good," he says, and raises his wand.


	2. Hogwarts, 2019

Scorpius loses consciousness on the floor of the divination tower.

Not immediately, though. The whole process takes a surprisingly long time. His body collapses within seconds of leaning over the crystal ball he's sharing with Al, but he's still conscious for some time after. He can't say how much time, though, mostly because in the instant between when he drops off the chair and lands on the floor, he's no longer sure what time is.

He feels absolutely untethered – from the room, from the universe, from time itself. He stands at the center of an immense web, staring down every radiation at once, everything that ever has been, is, will be, could be, might have been.

At once, Scorpius begins to shake with the fear of it.

"Scorpius! _Scorpius!_ "

The flow of information is devastating, suffocating. He sees the earth cooling, crashing into the rock that would be its moon; he sees it consumed by the bloated red giant of its dying sun. He sees civilizations on words he'll never set foot on rise, mighty and preaching eternity; he sees them dwindle into ruins, into silence, into dust. He sees infant stars cradled in the nebulae, and he sees them die in violent cataclysm.

He starts to scream.

"Professor—!"

"Stand back."

The universe itself, a point of infinite density, expanding; then ripping itself at its own seams, collapsing, reality itself tearing apart; then everything in between, _all at once, screaming through his head, stop it, stop it, stop it, stop stop stop stop—_

"Mr. Malfoy, can you hear me?"

He is an insect trying to make sense of the avalanche coming to crush him, a sapling trying to comprehend the wildfire. He can see everything, but understand nothing. He is barreling into something far greater than he ever could be, far vaster and far more terrifying.

"Mr. Malfoy, I'm going to forcibly close your Inner Eye."

He does not feel the warm, rough hand on the back of his head – at least, not until he feels it drag him up and out of the terrible spiderweb. All at once, as though crashing through the surface of the ocean, Scorpius is back in the divination classroom, at the top of the tower, and it is September 4, 2019, just past 3:00 in the afternoon.

But Scorpius is still shaking, though he has stopped screaming. Whatever just happened to him, it has soaked into the deepest parts of his bones, and he knows he'll never be rid of it.

Professor Firenze is stooped over him, his forelegs bent, his hand still gripping the back of Scorpius's head. His face is twisted in a combination of concentration of worry.

"Mr. Malfoy," he says, "can you hear me?"

Eyes burning with terrified tears, breath stuttering, Scorpius nods.

"What you just went through is known as an Opening," Firenze tells him. "In Seers of strong ability, their first time opening their Inner Eye can sometimes be painful."

" _Painful?_ " It's Albus. Scorpius knows his voice well enough, though he can't see him. He sounds hysterical. "He only just stopped screaming!"

"I'm aware, Mr. Potter," Firenze answers. He slides one arm under Scorpius's knees and lifts him easily up off the ground. "Please go find Professor Trelawney, Mr. Potter, and tell her what happened. She'll be able to continue the lesson."

Scorpius almost feels as though he's in physical pain, as though he's been hit with some tremendous force that has shattered every bone and bruised every muscle.

Al, for his part, looks like he's about to cry. He looks between Scorpius and Professor Firenze. "I… where—?"

"She should be further up the tower, likely taking a nap. I need to take Mr. Malfoy to the Hospital Wing."

Scorpius hears whispering, and realizes for the first time that the other third-year students are huddled in groups and whispering. After everything he's seen, Scorpius cannot find the will to care about something as comparatively trivial as the approval of his peers.

Professor Firenze nudges the door open with his front hoof and carries Scorpius through the threshold to the top of the stairs, which he descends with surprising grace for being half-horse.

"Your Eye is fighting me," he says to Scorpius, more softly now that they're alone and in the tall, echoing stairwell. "It's taking nontrivial strength to keep it shut."

Scorpius doesn't answer. He's not sure he can. He still feels as though he's reeling, physically as much as mentally.

When Firenze's pause is met only with silence, he continues: "Mr. Malfoy, I don't know what it is you saw, but you should know that with most Seers, an Opening results in nothing more severe than a headache. That yours sent you into screaming convulsions on the floor means that your talent for divination is surely in a class of its own."

In another situation, maybe, Scorpius would find that startling, or impressive, or terrifying, or anything at all. Right now, he's far too exhausted to consider it at all.

There's a look of worry on Firenze's face, but it's gone when he sets his eyes ahead decisively.

"A healer will be able to help you," he says, and Scorpius hopes he's right.


	3. Calais, 2023

Scorpius knows how this evening will play out – or at least, he knows how it could. He knows every subtle gesture, every word that could alter the conversation-yet-to-be, knows how to end it with fire or with ice. He's known this for every conversation he's had since 2021.

So when Scorpius comes into the small sitting room, the only possible thing he can't be prepared for is how all that self-awareness does nothing to keep him from reacting just like he did when he was twelve, the first time they met: with a stutter, a stumble, and a wave of awe.

Because even after all these years, Harry Potter is just as impressive as he's always been.

More so, perhaps, now that he's decked in garb of his station: a stately vest and trousers under an open robe, rectangular glasses glinting in the candlelight, combed black hair, with the stubble of a man who spent too much time reading legislation last night.

Scorpius knows every eventuality of this conversation. He knew that Harry Potter could reduce him right back to a bumbling, awestruck child, but he had no idea how easily he could do it.

"Minister Potter," Scorpius says, somewhat belatedly, dropping into a low bow.

"Please, Scorpius," is his answer, with a restrained smile. "I've known you since you were twelve. Harry's fine."

Scorpius rises back up, trying desperately to divine the likely course of this conversation, but finding himself too nervous.

"God," Harry laughs, voice edged in nervousness, "you look _exactly_ like your father."

Something in Scorpius twists. "Your son looks exactly like you," he answers, and hates himself for it immediately.

The smile on Harry's face trips and falls off. They are left standing silently amid all that they aren't mentioning at that moment.

It's Harry who finally breaks the tensions, clearing his throat and turning away toward the table behind him.

It's a small sitting room, private and cozy, with one window and a large hearth. In the center is a stately mahogany table, with a pot of tea kept under a magical heat seal. Like most sitting rooms in the Academy, it's designed precisely for meetings like this with people like them: heads of state and the Seers they've come to commiserate with.

"I was surprised when I got the memo," Harry says, sitting down at the table. Once he's situated, Scorpius sits down across from him. "I knew you were a talented Seer, but I suppose I never realized how talented. You're definitely going to replace her, then?"

"Yes," Scorpius says. Harry produces his wand from the sleeve of his robe and uses it to serve the tea. "We… spoke recently."

Harry glances up at him briefly between precise charms. "That must have been quite a conversation."

"Conversations between Seers always are," Scorpius answers. The teapot fills his small cup, then flies over to Harry's.

"You don't seem particularly enthusiastic," Harry says.

"Is enthusiasm the proper response to being given massive political power at the age of eighteen?"

Harry's mouth twists in deference to his point. "I suppose not," he says. "But are you ready for it?"

Scorpius doesn't answer. That's a question not even his Eye can give him.

"Not to make matters worse, Scorpius, but the Grand Seer is one of the most important political figures in the world. If you're not ready for this—"

"Ask me again next year, when it happens."

"You know when it will happen?"

"Of course I know."

"Then do you know how you'll handle it?" he asks. "Being the most important political figure, arguably, on the planet?"

What's Scorpius supposed to say to that? That the Minister of Magic is fundamentally misunderstanding what a Seer does, what time is? That there are ten thousand answers to his question, and shall he list them alphabetically or in order of severity?

Scorpius looks up from his cup of tea. Harry is leaning urgently across the table, and Scorpius can see all the subtle signs of age on his face, the first laugh lines around his mouth, the beginnings of crow's feet at the corners of his eyes, the sad wisdom of a veteran burning quietly behind the green.

Scorpius has to force his eyes back onto the table.

"Codeword clearance," Scorpius mutters.

"What?"

"You came to talk about codeword clearance."

Harry is silent a moment. "Right," he says. "Scorpius, you know—"

"I know," Scorpius says. Many more things than he should like.

"If you need help—"

"You have enough on your plate."

"I'll make time."

Of course he will. _You have to save everyone,_ Scorpius could say.

 _That's my job description,_ Harry would answer amiably.

 _You already saved everyone,_ Scorpius could reply, _with a few notable exceptions._

And then they would look at each other, and they would both see through the flimsy veneer covering the real issue at hand, and then Harry would leave, or Scorpius would leave, or they would talk about Scorpius's father, or Harry would stand up and move toward him—

"You won't be too proud to ask, will you?" Harry asks him, and all those veins of possibility, of time, fizzle out at once. "Your father was always too proud."

 _I'm not my father,_ Scorpius could say, but doesn't. _You know that, don't you?_


	4. Hogwarts, 2019 II

Madame Pomfrey gives him something that smells like juniper and antiseptic, and tastes just like it smells. She doesn't tell him what it does, but he finds out easily enough on his own: within ten minutes, Scorpius feels his mind begin to fog, his heartbeat begin to ease. He does not forget the terrifying knot of time into which he was just thrust, but he is able to step back from it and, albeit slightly drunkenly, process it.

For nearly an hour – and now Scorpius knows what hours are, thank Merlin – he lies curled up on the thin, lumpy mattress there in the corner of the Hospital Wing, and on the far side of the room he hears Madame Pomfrey muttering to various professors who come asking – Headmistress McGonagall, Slughorn – that they're going to have to call in a special consult, that she has no idea what to do in the long-term.

Hour two rolls around, and Scorpius is on the edge of falling into something like sleep when he hears a soft voice behind him.

"Scorpius…?"

He forces his eyes open and slowly lifts his head to look over his shoulder. Al is a few feet away and approaching slowly, like he's nervous, although Scorpius can't imagine why.

"How are you feeling?"

Scorpius considers the answer for a minute.

"Drunk," he answers eventually.

"Madame Pomfrey said you might be," Al says. "The draught that closes your Eye, she said it could put you a bit off-balance."

Scorpius drops his head back onto the pillow. He can hear the hesitation in Al's footsteps behind him, and a moment later he comes around to the other side of his bed and sinks down to the floor, centered in Scorpius's line of sight.

"So you're not in pain anymore?" he asks.

"Wasn't in pain," Scorpius mumbles. His eyelids are heavy and his vision is swimming.

"You were screaming," Al says with a frown.

Even if he weren't drunk – or whatever he is – Scorpius would lay even odds that he could not adequately explain to Al why he screamed. He's not even sure he could explain it to himself. He's barely even sure what he saw, let alone why it was the most viscerally terrifying experience of his life.

Scorpius shivers involuntarily recalling it, and his knees curl up toward his chest.

"Sorry," Al mutters, scooting closer across the aging tile floor. "I didn't…"

Scorpius shakes his head. It's the very last thing in the world he wants to talk about.

Al worries his lower lip. Scorpius drops his eyes shut.

"Your dad's coming."

Not terribly surprising. If convulsing and screaming in the middle of class doesn't get an owl home, Scorpius isn't sure what would.

"Apparently he's tied up in some business in Sao Paulo, but he's ordered a long-distance portkey for tomorrow morning."

Right before Scorpius can ask how he knows—

"Slughorn told me to tell you. I guess you were asleep when he came."

As much as Scorpius doesn't like to admit it, being thirteen, he is privately glad that his father is coming. After this afternoon, it will be good to see him.

"I'll stay here with you," Al says abruptly, all his words stumbling over each other on their way out of his throat. "If you want me to."

Scorpius opens his eyes again. Al is right up at the side of the bed, big green eyes boring right into him.

"You don't have to do that," Scorpius mutters.

"I want to," Al answers at once. He presses his forearms on the edge of the bed and leans forward. "You really scared me, Scorpius."

He's not sure why, but Scorpius feels guilty to hear it. "I'm sorry."

"Do you remember that time in first year, when Madame Hooch was giving us flying lessons, and you were such a disaster that you flew into a tree?"

Despite himself, Scorpius laughs. "Father never forgave me."

"It's funny in retrospect, but when I first saw you hit that tree and fall ten feet, for a second I was the most scared I've ever been about anything," Al says. "I barely even knew you at the time, but already, I…"

Scorpius presses his lips together tightly. He has a feeling, quiet and timid and in the very back of his mind where he keeps all the other things he doesn't think about, that he knows where this is going. "Al…"

"I suppose from the moment I met you, I've always…" He falters, starts again. "Something about you just—" He stumbles again, pushes a hand through his hair.

Al is floundering, but so is Scorpius. It's not like Scorpius hasn't noticed the way Al always scoots closer when they're bent over their cauldron, or how he stares across the dormitory when Scorpius combs his hair at night, it's just that Scorpius has never known what to do about it, never known how to handle—

Al leans forward and kisses him – just once, just briefly – and Scorpius's mind grinds to a halt.

Before he can even decide how to react, it's over. Al is pulling away again with a look halfway between horrified and anticipatory.

"Just don't scare me like that again, okay?"

"Okay," Scorpius answers without thinking, which he immediately realizes is a stupid thing to say, but Al smiles anyway.

"Do you want me to stay?" Al asks.

"Madame Pomfrey—"

"—will have to drag me out by the feet," Al interjects.

Something surges in Scorpius's chest. It's warm, and it's new, and it's not something he'd ever thought he'd feel for goofy, loudmouth, ridiculous Al. But there it is anyway, and as Al snags one of Scorpius's pillows to fashion himself a seat by the wall, it only gets stronger.


	5. London, 2024

The first thing Harry asks when Scorpius enters the Ministerial Manor is, "Have you been drinking?"

Scorpius pauses in the doorway, eyes focusing and unfocusing. "I'm not _drunk_." Technically correct is always the best kind of correct.

Harry looks incensed, which on the Minister-of-Magic-slash-savior-of-the-wizarding-world is a look that would make the strongest men shudder. He pulls off his glasses and rises up from his desk, green eyes burning in sudden anger. "You are the _Grand Seer_ , Scorpius, and you're here on an _official consult_ —"

"I know exactly why I'm here," Scorpius answers at once, unfazed and decidedly not shuddering. "I knew before you did."

"Then what the hell are you doing, getting shitfaced in the middle of the day?"

"You only think you want that answer," Scorpius replies, moving around him. "And I'm not drunk."

"You can barely fucking stand!"

"I'm sorry, did you call me in to ask for a divining or to have me run a half-marathon?"

Before Scorpius can collapse into the waiting chair across from the stately mahogany desk of the Minister of Magic, he is grabbed by the wrist, pulled back, wrenched around, and the next thing he knows, he is toppling into him.

And in that sudden contact, everything seems to hitch – breaths, words, anger, even time. For the briefest moment, Scorpius can smell Harry's aftershave. _Merlin_. If only his Eye had prepared him for _that_.

Scorpius knows what's going through Harry's head in that moment, and not only because he is staring right into his face as his pupils suddenly blow wide and the lines of his throat roll as he swallows. In that instant, Harry wants him _badly_ , and it is written into every line of his face.

Just as quickly as it started, it's over. Harry drops Scorpius's wrist, but Scorpius can still feel the heat of it melted under his skin.

"I can't have you like this," Harry says, recovering as well as could be expected. "I have the magical Polish government on the edge of a violent coup, and I need the Grand Seer sober."

Before he can pull out his wand, Scorpius says, "the Soberflame charm won't work."

Harry narrows his eyes. "Why not?"

"Because I'm not drunk," Scorpius says for the third time thus far in the conversation.

"Are you on something?" Harry demands, eyes narrowing further.

"Nothing illegal," he says. "Nothing not necessary."

Scorpius supposes he could sit down now if he want to, but from where he is right now, he can still smell Harry's aftershave, and the part of him he has hated for nearly three years wants to hang on that for as long as he can.

"Scorpius," Harry says, tightly, advancing again, "I don't know what kind of shit you've gotten yourself into, but this has got to stop."

"If you don't know what shit I've gotten myself into, how can you be so confident about what I have to do about it?"

"Because you're the _Grand Seer_ , people are relying on you!"

"And here I am, doing my job!" Scorpius barks at him. "Or does my trauma need to be on your terms?"

" _What_ trauma?"

Scorpius bares his teeth, sways in his spot. His mind is still slowed, but not so slowed that he mistakes answering for a good idea.

Anger fades to alarm. "Scorpius, what trauma? What happened?" He pauses, then amends, "Has it happened yet?"

Scorpius's nostrils flare. "There will be an attempted coup on the 23rd," he says.

Even odds that changing the subject doesn't work, and it doesn't. "Scorpius, tell me what happened. I can help."

"If you station aurors correctly, you can save the Premier. If you act quickly, you can avoid it entirely. But—"

"I'll deploy the fucking aurors, all right? Now tell me what the hell has got you day drinking and half-dead! I can—!"

"You can't."

"I _can!_ "

" _You can't!_ " Scorpius bellows at him, louder than he had intended it to be. "You can't solve everything, you can't fix this, you can't fix me!"

"I'm not letting you get hurt again!" Harry shouts back at him.

Scorpius hates this, more than anything. Harry stares at him with so much passion and drive and fiery desire that Scorpius wants to burn up in it, to kiss him until their lips are bruised, to follow the thread of time that he knows ends in reckless abandon, with Scorpius lying open and debauched on the desk, with Harry's kisses on his chest and his hands on his thighs as they fuck away all the demons in their heads.

But he doesn't. Because there's no _again_ ; Harry never hurt him in the first place so he certainly couldn't manage it _again_. The imagined scars Harry left him do not exist on Scorpius's skin, and he knows that desperate, wonderful, delirious thread of time ends with Harry's cock in him, his lips on his jaw, and a name that's not his ghosting down the side of his neck.

And Scorpius doesn't hate himself enough to let himself be what Harry wishes he was.

Scorpius reaches into the pocket of his robe with trembling hands and shoves a piece of paper at Harry's chest.

Harry fumbles with it. If he heard himself, heard what he said to Scorpius, he does a good job of ignoring it. "What's this?"

"It's an entire transcript of our conversation if you hadn't just said that to me," Scorpius answers. "It answers all the questions you dragged me here for in the first place."

Harry is struggling to catch up, which is fine. Scorpius can't stand to look at him anymore. He pushes past Harry.

"Draco—"

Scorpius slams the office door behind him.


	6. Steyning, 2019

Madame Pomfrey's foul-smelling elixir is, as it turns out, not only quite an obscure potion but also expensive to buy and time-consuming to brew. She runs out her store of it by day two, and by day three, Scorpius can't get through the morning without breaking down into terrified tears.

That's the day his father talks Headmistress McGonagall into letting him take Scorpius back home to Steyning. The boy can't function, his father had said, though Scorpius could barely make the words out through the sound of the universe ringing in his ears. And he certainly can't do schoolwork in any meaningful capacity. We'll catch him up when he's not…

His father hadn't finished that sentence, but he hadn't needed to. The Headmistress had agreed, and then left to grab some papers for Father to sign.

And though it is nice to be back – and it certainly is – Scorpius can't find the comfort he wishes he could when he's sleeping in his own bed, breathing in the smell of his father's poached eggs and sourdough toast the next morning. He feels thin, sort of delicate, like a spider's web caught in a storm, always one strong breeze away from being carried away on the breaking branch he clings to. Always, always, always, there's a horrendous cacophony in his head, a constant roar from visions he doesn't understand, images he can't shake, and though he's stopped screaming, he's never stopped wanting to.

"We're going to have a visitor this morning," Father says to him as Scorpius tries to eat, but mostly pushes around, his breakfast.

Scorpius doesn't answer. His fingers twitch around the stem of his fork, and behind his eyes, he sees flashing images one after the other, ceaseless and frightening in their infinities.

"I think she'll be able to help. She reached out to me the moment I decided to reach out to her, before I actually started writing the letter, so I suppose she must know something about Sight."

Scorpius is in no sort of place to feel anything like hope. He takes a very small bite of his eggs.

Father is upset by Scorpius's silence, he can tell. In another situation, he'd feel compelled to reassure him, but things as they are, he doesn't have the energy.

"Oh, and you got an owl from that Potter boy."

Something familiar knots in Scorpius's stomach. The prongs of his fork scrape on the plate, and he looks up at Father.

Encouraged, Father keeps talking. "I still can't believe you chose him of all people as a friend," he says, sawing into a piece of hamsteak.

Scorpius hopes he didn't read the letter. He's not sure he wants his father knowing that Al kissed him two days ago. He has nothing close to the energy necessary to answer those questions.

"I don't disapprove," Father adds quickly. "I'm certainly not going to repeat my own father's mistakes and tell you who you can and can't associate with. It's just an interesting twist of irony is all. His father and I…"

Scorpius fades out. He can't concentrate on what his father's saying anymore. He would if he could, but his head is still full of screaming chaos, and it's drowning out everything else into a distant hum. It's so loud that it pounds between his ears like a headache, so incessant that makes him almost nauseous with it. Scorpius loses his appetite.

Across the table, his father frowns.

"It's not important," he says. "Are you feeling sick?"

Scorpius doesn't answer. He can barely hear him. The sounds in his head get louder and softer in patterns he can't discern, and right now it's very loud. He folds his arms across his stomach and bends forward over the table, pressing his forehead into the wood, trying to will himself into silence.

"Scorpius, can't you just tell me what's wrong? Merlin knows you've never had trouble speaking your mind…"

Scorpius whimpers, claps his hands over his ears. It's so loud. Why is it always so loud?

"I want to help you, but I can't if you don't talk to me."

How is Scorpius supposed to talk? He can't even hear himself think. He's barely holding himself together at all. Scorpius wishes at that moment that he could reach into his own head and rip the sounds out from where they've burrowed in his brain. They're just so loud, he can't take it anymore—

"Oh!"

Father stands up, his chair scraping on the wood of the dining room floor. The hearth on the other side of the archway must have rushed with someone's arrival, but Scorpius couldn't hear it. Nor can he hear the conversation that ensues. He stays doubled over in his chair, gripping his head, praying to whatever god is out there that it stops, please, just let it stop…

"Yes, this is him. Scorpius."

"How long since his Opening?" asks a voice Scorpius doesn't recognize.

"Three days," Father says. "They ran out of jasmine draught at Hogwarts. I've owled for more, but it's on backorder…"

"Scorpius?"

Scorpius doesn't look up. He's taken to rocking slightly in his spot, head absolutely searing with pain-not-pain, sound-not-sound, vision-not-vision.

"Scorpius, try to focus on the sound of my voice, if you can."

He can detect that someone is kneeling next to his chair, a woman, but Scorpius can't get his vision to stop swimming so he can look at her. She's rummaging for something, in her robe or in a bag, he can't tell.

"What you're experiencing is actually very common with Seers of a high caliber," she says. "Your Eye is strong, but untrained. Instead of perceiving specific visions, it's perceiving all of time, all at once. Your mind can't make sense of it."

She seems to find what she was looking for.

"Move your hands, Scorpius, I have something that will help."

The muscles of his hands are too stiff to move, but she pries his fingers loose enough to drop something around his neck. When it hits his chest—

—it stops.

All at once, it stops. It leaves a cavernous silence in his own mind, one that he'd almost forgotten. For a moment, he's too shocked to move.

"Better, isn't it?"

One hand claps over it – it's a heavy pewter pendant on a long chain, and it – how did it—?

"It's called a Diviner's Cross."

Scorpius's head snaps around. He's finally able to focus on the woman kneeling at his side. She's young and birdlike, with long mahogany hair and eyes twice as old as the rest of her face.

"A very rare and powerful artifact that shuts the Inner Eye for as long as you wear it. It's yours now."

It seems silly, but at once Scorpius finds himself on the verge of tears.

It stopped. The sound and the fury of it are gone, really gone.

"Scorpius?" Father says behind him.

"It stopped," Scorpius chokes. "I – I can't – thank you so much—"

"My name is Madeline Walsh," she says, "and I'm here to help."

He feels his father behind him suddenly, his familiar hand in his hair as he bends to kiss the top of his head and hug him tightly from behind.

"Thank you," Scorpius babbles at her, tears pouring down his face. "Merlin, thank you, I don't know what I would have done—"

"For a strong Seer, an Opening can be an absolutely traumatic response," Madeline Walsh says, and Scorpius finally notices that she's wearing heavy, formal gray robes that Scorpius feels like he's seen somewhere before, though he can't be sure. "A mind not properly attuned to an Eye as strong as yours can rip itself apart."

"But he'll be fine now?" Father says behind him. "That necklace – that will let him go back to school?"

"Mr. Malfoy," Madeline says, looking up at him, "I'm afraid there's no going back, not for your son."

Scorpius grips the pendant of his necklace, staring at her in tear-blurred confusion.

"Seers of his talent come along maybe a dozen times in a generation," she says. "Not only would it be a disservice to your son not to cultivate his natural talent, it would be a disservice to the greater magical community."

"I beg your pardon?" Father says, wary.

"I don't understand," Scorpius mutters.

Madeline smiles patiently at him. "I'm from the Academy, Scorpius," she says, "the seat of the Grand Seer, and the preeminent school of divination in the world. I'm here to enroll you."


	7. Zurich, 2025

It's not that Scorpius is in any way used to being treated like a major political figure, because strictly speaking he is not, it's just that definitionally he is all but capable of being surprised. He knows in advance that when he and Harry Apparate together into the resplendent marble foyer of the Zurich Magical Summit that it will be swarmed with reporters from across the world. He knows that his and Harry's combined team of guards will form a wide circle around them, keeping the more ambitious ones at bay as they shout questions at them.

"Minister Potter, the Magical Separatist party in the U.K.—"

"Grand Seer, some of your advisers—"

"The Magical Premiere of Ireland said in an interview that this meeting—"

"The Minister of Magic is not taking questions!" shouts Harry's personal aide, and Scorpius should really get one of those; he would if it made any tangible difference.

"So you can't give me any hints about how this is going to go?" Harry asks Scorpius under his breath as they carve their way toward the stately, twelve-foot-tall mahogany doors on the far end of the room.

"I can, I just won't," Scorpius answers neutrally.

"Is it one of those violating causality things again?"

"If it were, I certainly wouldn't be able to say so."

"I don't like this," Harry decides as they come to a stop just inside the official meeting room. "The guards are antsy. They don't get spooked over nothing."

Scorpius looks at the nearest of Harry's guards, but doesn't really see them. He knows what they're looking for, of course, knows all about the threats they've been getting for the past few months on the strictest need-to-know basis.

"Minister Potter!"

It's the Magical Premier of Poland, tired, slumped, grayer than she ever has been, mustering up enthusiasm that she simply doesn't have. Scorpius can't blame her; she's been spending every minute of every day for the past four months trying desperately to calm political tensions in Krakow to varying degrees of success. Scorpius knows how much is riding on this summit for her.

"Please, Anna, call me Harry. You're familiar with the Grand Seer?"

"Not this one," she says. "How are my odds?"

"Long," Scorpius answers honestly. The Premier doesn't seem surprised.

"Can't fault him for honesty. I'm just glad the Academy is finally inserting itself. Your predecessor always stayed out of this matter."

It would take too long to explain the complicated web of choice and chance and fate that prevented it. Instead he says, without bothering to visually confirm, "France and Germany are here."

Or at least, their magical leaders are, carving through the crowds as Harry and he had. More pleasantries are exchanged, more hands shaken.

"This is not happening a moment too soon," the Premier says as they all head properly inside. "We've had some rather alarming threats made against the government, and our intelligence confirms that there's the very real possibility of a coup. With your cooperation and some sanctions, I think we should—"

Right on cue, Scorpius hears the screaming.

Harry is the first to spin, old war instincts kicking in, and before the other three even identify the sound, his wand is out and pointed at the doors, still open.

Flashes of spellwork bursting over the crowd, reporters go scrambling out of their line of sight, and just as the guards assemble in front of the doors, hurrying to close it, there's a great, thunderous BOOM, and everyone within twenty feet of the doors goes flying backward.

Except Scorpius, of course, whose barrier ward was up before the spell landed. As his eyes readjust from the flash of light, a lone man with a scraggly beard and wide, mad eyes comes shambling into the room and right up to Scorpius.

Scorpius has seen him before. Or to be more precise, he hasn't seen him yet, before. In any case, Scorpius knows precisely who he is and what he wants.

"Zielinski," Scorpius says. "I don't believe we've met."

Igor Zielinski growls out broken, bitter English: "Move away, you are not my target, Seer."

"Not yet," Scorpius concedes.

"I'm here for the Premier!"

"I know why you're here. And you're going to fail."

Zielinski bares his yellowing teeth. " _Avada_ —!"

" _Expelliarmus!_ "

In the split second after Zielinski's wand goes flying out of his hand, three separate guards send him toppling to the ground, bound and wriggling in tough binding spells. Scorpius looks down at him, willing himself to study his face, now that he is seeing it properly for the first time. For reasons he can't quite identify, he wants to know this face. He wants to remember it.

"Scorpius!" A hand on his elbow, wrenching him around. "Are you okay?"

Scorpius doesn't say anything. He doesn't need to; Harry can see it.

Once the alarm is gone, it's replaced with anger. "You absolute bastard, did you See this? This is the kind of thing you have to tell me about!"

"Empty the area!" the guards outside call. "Crash on the Minister, get him to safe rooms, go, go, go!"

"We're not done," Harry tells him, even as a brace of guards comes in to shepherd him away by either arm. "We're not done!"

Beyond doubting, Scorpius knows for a fact that they never will be. As the guards separate them, take them each into magical lockdown rooms while they process the scene, Scorpius wonders how they ever could be.


	8. Calais, 2022

To say that Scorpius flourishes at the Academy would be disingenuous at best. Under the tutelage of the greatest and most competent Seers from around the world, he is not so much flourished as he is reborn.

The things he learns at the Academy, the resplendent marble building sitting on the very edge of France's northern coast, not only help him to overcome the crippling fear brought on by his Opening, but show him how to master it, how to turn it into his greatest strength.

Within his first weeks, he is taught about the true nature of time, about the fundamentally limited way in which most people understand it. He learns about chaos and causality, how to see the world coherently from a fourth-dimensional perspective.

And though the Academy is technically a school of magic, and though he is still taught in the classical subjects like transfiguration and potions and charms, the vast majority of his education is dedicated to the finer and subtler points of divination. There are other students, though Scorpius rarely interacts with them. There are only a handful of children around the world competent enough to be enrolled, and all lessons are taught one-on-one with a senior Seer on the Grand Seer's Council.

Being taught at the Academy, of course, comes with the expectation that the student will eventually come to work there once they're of age, but Scorpius finds that not only is he at peace with the idea, he's looking forward to it. Scorpius has never been so deeply fascinated, so profoundly affected, nor indeed so singularly competent at anything before. How could he do anything else with his life?

"I brought you a present," Al says when Scorpius answers the door.

"Al," Scorpius says in surprise, stepping out of the way. When he's wearing the Diviner's Cross – which is less and less these days, because his Sight is becoming less and less overwhelming – he still manages to get surprised. "I didn't expect you."

He and Al don't see each other as much as they did when they were both in Hogwarts, of course, although they still send letters and still visit on weekends. Every time Scorpius sees him, he's surprised all over again at how well Al has grown into himself. No longer the knobbly, energetic kid, Al has grown into a self-possessed young adult, sharp and funny and quick.

He looks more and more like his father each day, Scorpius thinks before he can stop himself.

Al holds out the present. It's small and square and wrapped in shiny silver paper, tied with a simple blue ribbon.

"A present," Scorpius says at last, taking it from Al's outstretched hand. "What's the occasion?"

"A thank you for introducing me to the Grand Seer," Al answers.

"I didn't introduce you to the Grand Seer," Scorpius says, puzzled.

"Oh, well give it back, then," Al replies, snatching it away.

Scorpius laughs. Al is very funny. Scorpius has always liked his sense of humor.

"There's no occasion," Al says, smiling, handing it back. "Can't a bloke get his boyfriend a present just because? I found this in the family vault and thought of you."

Al is also very thoughtful. Scorpius likes that about him, too. He likes a lot of things about Al and always has.

Scorpius sits down on his bed. Each student at the Academy gets their own room, if only because the building is massive and they are spoiled for space. Scorpius has done his up in shades of gold and brown, with a rich leather sofa and armchairs, a stately mahogany desk, and a double bed with a heavy down bedspread and golden canopy.

"You didn't have to get me anything," Scorpius says.

"Anyone who gives a gift because they has to is giving it for the wrong reason," Al says, sitting down next to him, their combined weight depressing the edge of the mattress. His wit is something else Scorpius likes about him and always has. "Go on."

Scorpius carefully unwraps the delicate silver paper and finds underneath a black wooden box that opens on a hinge in the back. When he snaps it open, he sees—

"A ring?"

"It's an heirloom," Al says. "One of many, many things left in Dad's vault. He's been going through it recently."

"So you gave me your dad's ring?" Scorpius asks incredulously. "Is it yours to give?"

"Oy, I'm his son, aren't I? Besides, he said I could. He agreed when I said you'd like it."

Scorpius looks back down at it. Its band is brushed gold, heavy, encircled with a Latin description that Scorpius can't read. It's inlaid with red jewels – rubies? – and is, Scorpius has to admit, a beautiful piece of jewelry.

"You can't give me this," Scorpius says, looking up at Al again. "This is – it's a family piece, I wouldn't feel right—"

"Scorpius, you've been an honorary Potter since we were both twelve," Al says.

"I'm really not," Scorpius assures him. "Not that your family hasn't been kind to me, but I am most assuredly a Malfoy."

Al smiles mysteriously. "Then take the ring as a promise that one day I'll make you a Potter in the only way you can become one."

Scorpius stares at him in silence a moment. He heard him, of course, but doesn't process its meaning until some time later.

Did Albus Potter just promise to marry him someday?

"Al…"

"You know, when you first came here, I was so worried that I'd never see you again," Al says. "Not just literally, either. I thought that even if I spent every moment I could with you, you'd still be changed forever, that you wouldn't be the Scorpius I knew."

Scorpius isn't quite sure where he's going with this. He's still trying to catch up with the fact that Al just said he wants to marry him someday.

"But look at you know," Al says, reaching out and brushing his fingertips along Scorpius's jawline. "They fixed you, and now you're stronger than you were before."

'Fixing' is not the term Scorpius would use, but he stopped trying to explain how his Sight had changed him to anyone who wasn't a Seer a long time ago. "Al, I…"

"I love you, you know."

 _Merlin_.

For some reason, the first thing Scorpius feels is guilt. Al loves him? Why does that make Scorpius so strangely sad?

"I do," Al says. "I thought I loved you when we were both twelve and stupid, but I think now it's real. I am perpetually amazed at everything about you."

"Al—"

Al kisses him, and Scorpius's eyes fall shut, though his fingers are still gripping the little wooden ring box.

"You make me laugh," Al says, between kisses that start to drop past his mouth and down near his neck, "you drive me crazy, and you've made yourself absolutely integral in my life somehow."

It's all very sweet and far more romantic than Scorpius is used to hearing from him, which can only mean—

"Aaa _aah—!_ "

—that Al is trying to seduce him. Scorpius feels the heat of his hand sliding along his inner thigh, and quite without meaning to, he leans back on one hand. They've done this before, by varying definitions of the term "this" – which is to say, they drunkenly dry-humped once last Christmas, and Scorpius gave him what was assuredly clumsy, sloppy head one July night while the rest of the Potter household slept.

"Scorpius," Al purrs.

"You know you don't have to get me jewelry just to get into my pants," Scorpius tells him tightly, head falling back.

"Scorpius," Al says again, more forcefully, leaning forward and kissing Scorpius's throat, "if I told you that I wanted to fuck you, what would you say?"

Scorpius wouldn't know what to say, but his cock throbs against the fronts of his trousers with great deliberateness. Al, who by that point is pressing his palm firmly into it, grins against the skin of his neck.

"That's a promising reaction. I found some spells, you know. To make things easier."

The objective answer to the objective question – _does Scorpius want Al to fuck him_ – is an obvious and resounding yes. But for how badly he suddenly finds he wants it, there's still a nagging doubt in the back of his mind that has, he suspects, very little to do with sex.

Still—

"Lock the door."

Al hurls a clumsy spell at Scorpius's bedroom door and then goes straight into peeling his shirt over his head. Scorpius does the same, his shirt hitting the floor, along with a solid _thunk_ as his Diviner's Cross follows. Scorpius wants this – he wants Al – yes, obviously – and he is willing to let that wanting eclipse the fact that Al just said _I love you_ , that he just promised Scorpius that they'd get married someday, and that Scorpius does not have a response to either of those things despite the fact that he feels like he should.

Al's fingertips hook over the hem of his trousers just as Scorpius falls back onto the bed. Scorpius's heart is racing as he realizes, perhaps more abruptly than he should, that he's about to lose his virginity. Should he be alarmed? This feels like something that should alarm him.

"You are so fucking gorgeous," Al informs him, voice a husky mutter, as he bends over Scorpius, naked from the waist up. "You're really all right with this?"

"Yes." Without his Diviner's Cross, which is now on the floor under his shirt, several scenarios flash through his eyes – an overeager Al hurting him, several days of a very sore back – and Scorpius amends, "I mean, yes, but just – be careful."

"Always," Al assures him, bending down and kissing Scorpius's breastbone.

This was not what Scorpius thought he would be doing today. When he feels Al's quick, clever fingers unsnap the button on his trousers, Scorpius's head falls to the side and he arcs his hips off the bed to help him pull them down. Al's hands are all over him, across his pelvis, down his hips, onto his—

"Ah—!"

He bucks his hips when one of Al's hands closes around his cock. His heart beats along the inside of his thigh.

"Leave everything to me," Al tells him softly, and so Scorpius does, for a while abandoned in his racing thoughts.

The first thing his eyes focus on is the little black ring box, at some point relegated to the bed-side table, standing open, the red gems glittering in the light. Scorpius has to admit that it's a very handsome ring. He can definitely picture it on Harry Potter's finger.

And then, without the Diviner's Cross, he does. He sees it play out in brief flashes in his mind – the cavernous Potter vault, the way Mr. Potter held it up to the light to read the Latin – _"Patris est filius,"_ Scorpius can hear him read, _"like father, like son."_

Scorpius moans heavily when Al hauls one of his legs over his shoulder. He should be thinking about everything Al just said to him, thinking about how this ring is a promise far greater than Scorpius can contemplate, about how in a few minutes, he'll feel the swell and the heat and the breach—

 _"I think Scorpius would like this,"_ he can hear Al saying.

He can see the moment of hesitation on Mr. Potter's face, and the sight of it rakes a shudder up his spine. He can see the conflict on his face. He can feel it in Mr. Potter's mind as though it were his own. That great and terrible taboo that Mr. Potter never talks about – the elephant in any room where they're alone—

 _"I think he would, too,"_ Mr. Potter answers, voice heavy with everything he cannot, dares not tell his son.

Scorpius hand closes over the ring.

"Are you ready?" Al asks him.

Scorpius's thighs lie open, the cool air sending jolts and jitters down his exposed skin. Al sits nestled between his legs, cock hard and red and glistening with precome. At some point, Al had run the full gamut of spells on them both, all the usual ones for protection and cleanliness, and this is happening, this is real, but all Scorpius can think about, the only thing in his head—

Sudden heat breaches him. Scorpius's entire body arcs upward off the bed, and Harry's ring presses hard into the palm of his hand as his body is opened in one long, uneven stroke.

"—hh _haaaahhnnnn—!_ "

"Fuck—" into his ear, shallow thrusts into his pliant body, "Scorpius, Merlin—"

Mr. Potter feels it, too, and Scorpius can See it the harder he grips that ring. Mr. Potter wants him. He holds tightly onto that ring and he can See it all, all the times Scorpius spent the night and Mr. Potter lingered in the hall to watch him while he played Exploding Snap by the fire, to admire his figure as a silhouette in the lamplight, he wants Scorpius.

"Oh, God," Scorpius gasps, hands shaking, fumbling to shove Harry Potter's ring onto his finger, as Al starts to fuck him. "Oh, God. Yes – I – I—"

He bends forward over Scorpius, and he knots both hands in his wild black hair. He wants Scorpius, Scorpius can See it, ever since he turned sixteen and the friendly affection became tempered with sudden maturing beauty—

"Oh, _God_ ," Scorpius gasps again, louder, as the rhythm hastens and his body tightens.

—he wants Scorpius, and he hates himself for it, but he can't stop it. And to know that every time Scorpius sat pining across the Potters' dining room table, hating his stupid and impossible crush on Mr. Potter, to know he felt it too, wanted it too—

"Scorpius," into his ear, and Scorpius realizes that he is white-hot with it, gasping and writhing, hands gripping hard in Al's hair.

"Harder," Scorpius whispers, and all he hears in answer is a groan of compliance. Hips buck more firmly, and Scorpius Sees his own ache tomorrow, and he doesn't care.

Harry Potter's ring burns hot around his finger, and all the images of Mr. Potter wanting him, needing him, they rage in his blood and Scorpius is so close oh God he's so close, his toes are curling, his heart is thundering—

Until of course, the sudden blaze of climax, untouched cock pulsing hard against his stomach, sending ropes of come onto his chest.

Above him, there's some strangled noise, and there's a sudden heat in him moments later, nearly as hot as Harry Potter's ring. The thrusting stutters, softens, and the last waves of his own climax are wrung from him like water from a cloth.

"Scorpius," in his ear, and his body is still warm with orgasm, "you're wearing my ring."

But Scorpius knows, now more than ever, that this is not Al's ring.


	9. Hampshire, 2018

Scorpius is twelve and is not nervous.

That's what he tells himself, in any case. Sure, he's always been a little jittery around strangers, and sure his best friend Al has a sister he's never met, a brother he only met once, and two parents he's never met, one of whom is the savior of the wizarding world, but that's fine. He's not nervous. Why would he be nervous?

"You're nervous," Al says.

"Yeah," Scorpius replies miserably.

They took a rental portkey right out of Platform 9 3/4, and it had deposited them just outside a little house in Hampshire, two stories, surrounded by acres and acres of fields. James must already be inside, because Scorpius can hear some consternation through the open front window.

"Don't even worry," Al says, "they'll love you."

"Will they?" Scorpius asks, head swiveling around. "My father said—"

"You're my best friend! They'll love you because I'll tell them to."

Scorpius feels somewhat encouraged by this news.

"Al!" says Harry Potter from the front door.

Well, marginally encouraged.

Though Al's parentage followed him around Hogwarts like a ghost, Al had never spoken of his father as anything but precisely what he was: a father. He likes Quidditch, and pulls for the Hollyhead Harpies ("Mum nearly played chaser for them before she took that hex to the shoulder!"); he has indecipherable handwriting, attested to every time he assiduously answers one of Al's letters ("Is it bad that I'm not sure if this word is 'hex' or 'they?'"); and he always sends the best birthday presents ("Scorpius, grab some rubber boots and a bunch of watermelons, you'll never guess what Dad sent!").

So really, Scorpius has nothing to worry about. He just has to think of him less as Harry Potter and more as Al's Dad.

"How's my forgotten middle child?" he laughs, scooping Al up into a big bear hug.

Al immediately starts talking in that way he does, where he makes lots of words very quickly but somehow doesn't say much.

He certainly looks more like Al's Dad than Harry Potter, and right away Scorpius can see the family resemblance. Al may as well be his carbon copy, right down to the glasses. So when he looks back at Scorpius, he's feeling pretty sure that this is going to be fine, Scorpius isn't nervous at all.

"Wow!" he says at once. "You look _exactly_ like your father."

"Sorry," Scorpius blurts out before he can stop himself.

He busts out into sudden laughter, and Scorpius is taken aback by it. Mr. Potter laughs like thunder in the summer, abrupt and all-encompassing.

"I – sorry, I—"

"You don't have to apologize, Scorpius," he says. "Welcome to Hampshire! Come on inside, Ginny's got on the kettle."

Here's the thing:

Scorpius had never experienced hero worship. At least not past the _my-father-is-my-hero_ sort of way that all boys his age feel. He certainly didn't feel it before, when Al's dad was more of a nebulous concept than he was anything else.

It's what came after that changed things. It's the knowing that he did save the world, and now he makes pancakes for his children in the morning; the knowing that he patiently teaches his perpetually clumsy daughter to fly in the afternoons, and that he is likely the most powerful wizard alive and is being drafted to run for Minister of Magic. It's the quiet juxtaposition of the domestic and the godlike that makes Scorpius realizes that he _really, really likes_ Mr. Potter, and that he wants Mr. Potter to like him, too.

And he does, in the way any father would like their kid's best friend. But for reasons that are not entirely clear to Scorpius at the time, it doesn't quite feel like enough.

He will spend the next seven years figuring out why.


	10. London, 2025

"What the _fuck_ was that?"

The very old, very famous double doors leading into the office of the Minister of Magic slam shut, and somehow the only thing Scorpius can think about is chiding him for being so aggressive with a piece of magical history.

"If I had to take an educated guess," Scorpius answers, "I'd say it was an assassination attempt."

"This is the kind of shit you have to _tell me,_ " Harry bellows at him. "If you See that some psycho comes at you with his wand outstretched, you drop me a fucking hint!"

"I am under no legal obligation to do any such thing," Scorpius replies icily.

"Don't get fucking smart! You know as well as I do that your obligations to me are a little more than legal!"

Scorpius bares his teeth as Harry comes stalking toward him, to where he's standing by the blazing hearth.

"Policy is policy," Scorpius says. "If I had told you about Zielinski's actions, it would have endangered a lot more people than just me."

"How convenient," Harry growls.

"You're not upset that I didn't tell you," Scorpius continues, despite or perhaps because of the fact that he knows where this line of the argument leads, "you're upset that you couldn't protect me on your terms, that you couldn't fucking save me."

Harry laughs bitterly. "Boy, does this conversation feel familiar. Scorpius, in case it's escaped your notice, you could fucking use someone looking out for you right now. You're the youngest Grand Seer in history and by far the most socially liberal—"

Scorpius feels like he could punch him. And likely several other things that would get both of them in even more trouble.

"—and every time you're pulled into geopolitical conflict, you somehow manage to get every single party angry! I am _not your enemy in this,_ Scorpius; I can _help you_ if you'd just let me!"

"You – can't – help me," Scorpius growls. "And I'm not just saying that as the aggrieved friend, I'm saying that as the Grand Seer. You _cannot help me_ ; there is nothing you can do to save me from—!"

Scorpius has to physically bite his tongue. He turns sharply on a heel, away from Harry's sudden look of dawning alarm, and stalks toward the liquor cabinet, where he pours himself a brandy.

"This is that trauma again, isn't it?" Harry says. "Was the attempted assassination not it? What's going to happen?"

Scorpius overfills a snifter with expensive, Minister of Magic-quality brandy and drinks all of it in one breath.

"If there's one thing I learned after the War…"

 _God._ Scorpius feels the alcohol burn behind his eyes. He knows what Harry's about to say, knows all the walls it will bring down.

"I was part of a prophecy, too," Harry says. "I'm not unfamiliar with fate. And I'm telling you that even if this terrible thing is inevitable, it is still worth fighting. Even with the certainty of defeat – _especially_ with the certainty of defeat. If we all just lie down in the face of some cosmic inevitability, then what's even the point of having free will? Just tell me what it is, I can help you, I know I can."

Everything hinges on how Scorpius answers this question. Don't fucking preach to me about prophecy, he could say, and reignite the argument, ending it with a furious storming out. _You're fundamentally misunderstanding the concept of time,_ he could say, and let the conversation fade like embers in a burnt-out hearth.

What he ends up saying is:

"Prophecy is not independent of free will, Harry, it's an extension of it."

Harry's brow furrows. Scorpius can't blame him for not understanding.

"This thing that's coming, it's not some inscrutable force of nature, it's all choices. Choices driven by ideology and passion and all the fundamentally human things that drive all of us. It's prophecy because some minds cannot and will not be changed. And my decision to keep you out of it is _my_ choice. I cannot and will not be changed. I have chosen and will always choose to protect you."

Scorpius counts the breaths until Harry's hand rests on his jaw, and his eyes fall shut. There's an instant between that first contact and Harry's next breath that is a moment of ecstatic bliss, a moment where Scorpius can almost, almost let himself forget—

"Draco, I'm supposed to be the one protecting you."

The moment shatters like glass in his cupped hands. He should drop it to the floor in fear of being cut, but instead he holds onto it all the tighter, until the shards dig into his skin and hot blood pools in his palms.

 _I'm not my father,_ Scorpius could say, but doesn't, because Harry knows he is not his father. It's not as though he is so blinded by his own regrets that he looks at Scorpius and sees Draco. It's just a mistake.

It's always, always just a mistake.

Scorpius chooses to focus on that, instead of the logical conclusions that can be discerned from all those mistakes.

He lifts his eyes. He had Seen this months ago, the closeness, the sudden electricity crackling between them, deep green eyes burning with fierce affection, and then with sudden concern.

"I should—"

Harry moves to draw his hand away. Scorpius grabs his wrist before he can move it an inch. There follows a deep pain carving itself across Harry's face.

"You should," Scorpius says, "but don't. Please?"

"This is dangerous," Harry says.

"You've never been a danger to me a moment in my life."

"Scorpius, you have no idea—"

"You think I'm wrong, but I'm not. I've been a Seer since I was thirteen, you think I couldn't See all the things you never did, never said?"

He can feel muscles tense under Harry's skin.

"You've had every opportunity to endanger me, but you never did, because you never would."

"Shit," Harry says, mortified.

"But it's been a long time since I was a stupid kid with a crush I didn't understand," Scorpius continues.

The lines of Harry's throat roll as he swallows. He is so close that his breath flutters in Scorpius's hair.

"I am old enough to be your father," Harry says.

"Yes," Scorpius agrees.

"I'm – I'm fucking married," Harry says.

"Yes."

"My _son—_ "

His words fall off on their own. The silence that falls is thick and unforgiving.

"Yes," Scorpius says for one last time. "And yet here we both are anyway, all cards on the table."

Scorpius counts the breaths again – _one, two, three, four_ – until Harry crashes into him. They go careening into the wall with such force that the china cabinet just to the left of them rattles precariously. At once, Scorpius's thighs are hauled up around Harry's waist; at once, he rips open Harry's robe and spreads his fingers through the narrow v-shape of dark hair down his chest.

Harry keeps his grip on Scorpius's thighs and spins around, throwing him down onto the Minister's Desk, sending expensive quills and unread legislation toppling onto the floor. Scorpius pushes Harry's shirt off his shoulders; Harry tugs open the clasps on his formal white robes. The whole ensemble falls open at once, and Harry draws back to look down at him.

The chaos lapses as Harry spends a while, drawing his eyes down Scorpius's chest, his stomach, his pelvis, his cock – then back up to his chest, green eyes searching the skin for something that he can't find. There's an intense emotional pain and resentment that twists in Scorpius, and he rolls over sharply, so Harry is sprawled on the desk, so more important documents and expensive stationery go toppling onto the floor.

Scorpius rips open the fronts of his trousers; Harry's cock is thick and long and half-hard and Scorpius climbs forward, straddling his hips and immediately rolling back onto it.

" _Fuck,_ " Harry says, knocking a small globe onto the floor as he reaches to grab hold of Scorpius's waist. "Fuck, _yes_."

The heat of him slides first along Scorpius's own cock and, with some readjusting, back along the crest between his thighs, moving along but not into his entrance. Even the mimicry feels good; Scorpius presses both hands into Harry's chest and lets his head fall back, rolling his hips, Harry's cock sliding deliciously, _addictively_ against the taut ring of muscle.

Fingers dig into the skin of his thighs. "God," Harry whispers, "I could fuck you dry."

"I could let you," Scorpius answers breathlessly, because he wants to hear that heavy, throaty moan it pulls from Harry's chest.

"Dangerous," Harry says, flying up into a sitting position and once again hauling Scorpius up by the back of his thighs.

They kiss like a hurricane and go careening through the doors of the adjacent Minister's Residence like an avalanche. They go slamming onto an end-table so Harry can rip off Scorpius's open robe. Scorpius pushes him down onto the luxurious scarlet armchair and straddles him again.

"You're not taking me dry," Harry says, and at this point Scorpius is so desperate that he's about to beg to differ, but Harry seizes him by the back of the neck with one hand, and with the other, presses two thick, spell-slicked fingers into him.

" _Merlin,_ " Scorpius sobs at once, hips trembling. He frantically tries – and mostly fails – to buck back onto the exquisite, breaching heat.

"Eyes on me, beautiful," Harry mutters.

Scorpius forces his eyes open and looks down at Harry's face. The look Harry fixes him with is, somehow, more intensely erotic and intimate than the fingers spearing him, working him open with patient, experienced diligence. Harry's grip on the back of his neck holds steady and his fingers press deeper.

"Good?" he breathes.

"Yes," Scorpius answers hoarsely. Harry crooks his fingers forward and Scorpius sees stars. " _Fuck._ Fuck. Yes, yes, yes, please, yes."

"I feel like I've been waiting thirty years for this," Harry says, crooking his fingers a second time, pressing hard onto Scorpius's prostate, making his entire lower half buck.

Scorpius tries not to think about why he chose thirty years. "Right there, just there – _fuck!_ Yes!"

"If I hurt you," Harry says, "let me know."

"I like it when it hurts," Scorpius answers at once.

The hungry look on Harry's face lasts only for an instant before he grabs Scorpius around the waist, picks him up off the chair as though he were no heavier than a doll, and slams him down spread-eagle on the coffee table, and Scorpius grips the edges hard. No sooner as he landed, back bowed upward, head bowed over the far edge of the wood, than has Harry pushed into him in one long, deliberate stroke.

He's so _big_. So long that Scorpius feels him in places he didn't know he had; so thick that it feels like Scorpius might rip in half. And it _hurts_ , and it's _sudden,_ and it is _perfect_.

It's so perfect that Scorpius can't even see past the haze of white that's filled his vision; so perfect that he can't hear anything past the intense ringing in his ears. Harry fucks him, thoroughly, roughly, and nothing he ever Saw could have prepared him for exactly how ecstatically perfect it feels. Harry fucks him so forcefully that the aging wood of the coffee table groans in time with his thrusts, that Scorpius's cock, absolutely untouched, lies hot and red against his stomach, inches from climax. He grips onto the edges of the coffee table all the tighter.

Harry's hands are holding his waist, his hips snapping in time, and Scorpius knows that he'll feel the echo of this for days.

"Eyes on me," Harry says again, panting, and Scorpius dutifully blinks open his eyes in time to see Harry, expression wanting and ferociously possessive, bending over him. Scorpius can see all the months of unspoken tension in his expression, all the intensity from all the times they didn't dare knotted into that one look.

Scorpius feels like he might break apart underneath it.

One hand leaves Scorpius's waist to knot in his hair, but the rhythm of his cock in and out, in and out, doesn't falter for an instant.

"I'm going to come," Scorpius gasps, voice small and shaking, body taut.

The hand in his hair tugs sharply; Scorpius wails, his hips jerk, his cock throbs in desperate warning.

"I want to feel it," Harry says into the lines of Scorpius's throat, each stroke faster and impossibly deeper than before.

Scorpius shakes, holds onto the coffee table. His back arcs higher. He feels his body start to clamp down, on itself, on Harry's cock.

"Fuck," Harry whispers. "That's it, beautiful. Come for me."

The orgasm that rips out of him happens gradually, and then all at once. The first pulses of intense, body-melting heat, and then an all-encompassing whiteness that swallows him entirely. He stills, his voice hitches into silence, his body bucks, and he comes to a climax more intense than Scorpius even knew was possible. He breathes with it, his heart beats with it, and he falls apart with it, too.

There's soft words whispered against the shell of Scorpius's ear that he doesn't hear until what feels like hours of intense orgasm later. Harry, less than a minute behind him, bucking against his hips, stilling, gripping his hair and emptying heat into him.

And after all the rush and the chaos and the fury, time seems to slow. Scorpius's eyes refocus. He looks up at Harry, who's looking down at him, cock still buried in him, heartbeat slowing against Scorpius's skin.

Their lips are inches apart, but neither of them move to close the gap. They breathe, and they hold each other's gaze, and they both realize the same thing at the same time.

"Shit," Harry whispers.

Scorpius shuts his eyes. "Shit."


	11. Calais, 2019

The next time Scorpius sees Madeline Walsh, he is officially if not practically a student of the Academy. They owl him a portkey within a day of the final papers being signed, and while Scorpius is fully packed by the day after that.

He first arrives in the Academy on a sunny autumn day. The Academy is a gleaming white building hewn as if from one solid block of marble, "presently" situated on the northern coast of France (apparently it likes to move about once or twice a generation).

Scorpius is overwhelmed by it at once. His father had always made an effort to raise him comfortably, but far from the luxurious decadence they could surely afford, so seeing the shining marble foyer, the gilded staircase curving up to the balcony above, the glimmering chandelier, it all leaves Scorpius feeling a bit lost for breath.

"Don't worry," says Madeline Walsh, whose voice Scorpius picks out at once, "it has that effect on everyone the first time. She's a very proud building."

"Clearly," Scorpius replies, eyes moving up and up and up to the vaulted ceiling, to the incredible fresco painted between the rafters.

"Welcome to the Academy. I see your father's a bit preoccupied."

Scorpius looks back at him. He's grilling some poor young functionary about various methods of contact and emergency procedures. He is nothing if not overbearing, especially since Mother died.

"He does that," Scorpius says. "It will take a while before he's satisfied."

"Then how about I show you around? I'd give you the full tour, but we'd have to stop for dinner a quarter of the way through."

"This place _is_ huge," Scorpius admits.

Madeline smiles. "This way. We'll start with the places you'll need to find."

She sets off and Scorpius trails behind at her heels. Instead of going up the immense stairwell, she heads beneath it, through a large archway leading into a chapel-like hallway, lined with stained glass windows.

"You probably recognize this place," Madeline says.

"The Seer's Seat," Scorpius answers at once. It's a very famous magical landmark. He's seen it in textbooks and newspapers so often that the idea had almost become prosaic – luckily, seeing it in person is anything but. "It's incredible."

"Its true function is lost to time, I'm afraid," Madeline says. "There are legends that say that once a year, that throne acted as a lens that focuses the Inner Eye so acutely that the Grand Seer could see past the beginning of time itself, and far beyond its end. But the natural shift of the earth's orbit, the solar system within the galaxy – let's just say it doesn't focus quite so well anymore."

Scorpius stares at it wonderingly. It's a great behemoth of a chair, solid white marble, jeweled and glided along its angles.

"These days we mostly just use it for ceremony," Madeline admits. "The press doesn't want a picture of the Grand Seer if they're not on the throne."

"Will I get to meet her?" Scorpius asks, doing his best not to sound excited.

"A promising young Seer like you? I have no doubt," Madeline answers. "In fact, I'm sure she'll be interested in taking some time to tutor you privately."

Scorpius's mouth must be open, but for the life of him he's not sure when it happened.

"Don't look so surprised," Madeline chuckles, patting his shoulder lightly. "A Seer of your capacity comes along very rarely. She's been looking to groom her replacement."

" _Replacement?_ That's not possible," Scorpius says matter-of-factly. "I absolutely could never be the Grand Seer."

Madeline laughs full-throatedly, and it takes Scorpius aback.

"Talk to me again in six months, once you've trained that Eye of yours," she says, "and we'll talk again about nevers."

"Is that how long it will take?" Scorpius asks. "In six months, will it stop being so…"

Madeline raises her eyebrows at him. Scorpius hesitates, then finishes:

"… frightening?"

"Less frightening? Yes, I should think so. Unfortunately, I don't imagine it will get any less confusing. The nature of time is such that every answer you learn about it will lead to ten more questions. You should know that; you stared into it yourself."

Scorpius does not like to think about it. Just the suggestion of a memory is enough to make him cringe, to bring all those horrible, confusing, traumatizing images back to the fore. He stares down at the floor.

Madeline rests an affectionate hand on his head.

"It's all right," she tells him, and Scorpius looks up. "No one will ever shame you for a traumatic Opening. It's a frightening experience."

Scorpius shuffles his feet. "Father seemed upset that I couldn't just… talk it out with him."

"Your father isn't a Seer," Madeline says, "and he doesn't understand. He can't. The terrors and traumas of a Seer are unique to us. You have to learn early on not to expect empathy from those who don't stare headlong into the chaotic tangle of time."

"Then what am I supposed to tell him?" Scorpius asks, hiding his own desperation as best he can. "He's still upset that I can't tell explain why I keep waking up screaming. I don't know what to say."

"There's not much you can say," Madeline answers sadly. "Those who don't see time like we do interpret it from a third-dimensional perspective – they see it like a line, instead of the web that it is. They assume we see the future like they see the present, but we don't. You can try to explain it to them, and they may even feign ignorance, but no matter how well you say it, they won't know your trauma, because they fundamentally cannot."

Scorpius lowers his eyes again. "It sounds lonely," he says.

"It can be," Madeline admits, "but that's why we have each other."

Scorpius supposes that is an encouraging thought.

"Come on; I'll show you the kitchens."


	12. Steyning, 2025

Two days after the unsuccessful assassination attempt, Scorpius returns home to Steyning for a few days, officially for "family leave," which in the highest ranks of magical politics is code for psychological recuperation.

Not that he actually does much recuperating. Scorpius ends up spending most of his time downing jasmine oil like gin and sleeping for twelve hours at a time, tendencies which do not go unnoticed by his father.

Draco Malfoy is 45 these days, though the only sign of it is in his temperament. Whereas most working fathers his age are preoccupied with their own adult children, their flourishing careers, their communities, Scorpius's father behaves as though these things are pleasant distractions from some far greater matter. Like many in his generation, his stare is a thousand yards long, and everything he is and does is in the shadow of the War that nearly killed him and everyone around him before he even left school.

In the quiet moments, when they sit together in companionable silence in the lounge after dinner, Scorpius watches him as he sips his red wine and watches the fire, and Scorpius thinks about things. He thinks about his father's absolute steadfastness in not discussing the War, about how he's changed since Mother died—

And, obviously but somehow still to Scorpius's private shame, he thinks a lot about Harry, or to be more specific, he thinks about Harry thinking about Father.

Scorpius wonders what it is about his father that drew – draws – Harry to him. There's a lot to like about his father, but there's also quite a lot to not like. Is it his dignity, his breeding? His poise?

"Only if you insist," Scorpius answers.

Father looks up from the fire, pauses, then frowns. "Scorpius," he chides, "you know I hate it when you answer questions I haven't asked yet."

Scorpius forces himself to backtrack. "Sorry. Jasmine oil makes everything unfocused."

Father tsk-tsk-tsk's him. "Are you ever going to stop drinking that awful draught?"

Scorpius pauses, then says, "Only if you insist," a second time just in case.

"At least we're all caught up now," Father says.

"The real conundrum is if you ever would have asked it if I hadn't answered it first," Scorpius says.

"You've tried explaining temporal recursion to me before, Scorpius. Let's just both assume I won't understand. And I'm perfectly serious; you really should stop drinking so much of that. I don't like what it does to you."

"I cope as I need to cope."

"You've been coping two flasks a day long before the assassination attempt, Scorpius," Father says flatly.

Maybe it's his wit that Harry likes so much. His father has always been very witty, often to a fault.

"Besides, I doubt it could be that traumatizing if you knew it would fail."

"Have you spoken to Minister Potter since he took office?"

Father frowns at him over his sip of wine. "What did I just say about this jumping forward in the conversation, Scorpius?"

"I'm not jumping forward, I'm changing the topic. Have you spoken to Minister Potter since he became Minister?"

There's a half-second of hesitation. "No," he says. Then, "Of course not. Why would I have done?"

"He came to Mother's funeral."

"Because he's a good person and you're his son's partner, not because he had any desire to see me, I assure you," Father says. "Why are we talking about Harry Potter? Are you trying hide some growing addiction to jasmine oil from me?"

"He talks about you a lot," Scorpius answers neutrally. "And you can't be addicted to jasmine oil."

"I'm sure it's in your head."

"It's really not."

Scorpius has already Seen multiple versions of this conversation well in advance, but with the heavy fog of jasmine oil slowing his mind, he can't remember any of them. His Eye only works in fits and starts, random bursts of Sight, and right now all that's available to him is the fact that his father is hiding something from him.

"I can't go a day without hearing him talk about how much I look like you," Scorpius says. "Just last night, he called me Draco."

"Last night?" Father echoes, frowning. "You were here last night, what were you doing talking to Harry Potter?"

"Unofficial Divining?" Scorpius answers glibly, knowing that his father won't believe him.

"Harry Potter would never allow for an _unofficial_ Divining with the Grand Seer in the middle of the night," Father returns, hints of an old anger flaring up behind his eyes. "He's not that underhanded."

Scorpius laughs, despite his better judgment. He sinks back further into the armchair, drawing his knees up to his chest and letting his head drop back against the overstuffed satin.

There's a moment of silence in which Scorpius finds the only thing to be heard is the soft crackling of the fireplace.

"Scorpius," his father says, more slowly, "what were you doing with Harry Potter last night?"

"Not an official Divining."

Scorpius counts the seconds until his father works it out. If he works it out quickly, Scorpius will know that he had something on which to base such a bold assumption; if it takes too long, Scorpius will know that there was not.

"Yes," Scorpius answers.

"Are you – oh, my God."

Father stands up so quickly that his wine glass topples out of his hand, but the spell catches the wine before it falls and keeps it pressed to the bottom of the glass. He turns his back so Scorpius can't see his face, but that's fine. Scorpius doesn't need to see his face.

"Yes, we are. And if you're keen to know why, it's because I'm in love with him, and he can't have _you_."

His back is still to Scorpius, but Scorpius can see his shoulders shake, see the subtle clench of his fist at his side.

Then he storms from the room without warning, leaving the spelled wine glass to roll feebly back and forth on the floor.

Scorpius hates himself for this, but not nearly so much as he hates himself for everything else.


	13. Calais, 2023 II

The last time Scorpius sees the Grand Seer, she is propped up in the extravagant four-poster bed in her private quarters at the top of the tallest tower of the Academy. Scorpius enters slowly and hesitantly. He's frightened, though he's not sure why.

"Justine?"

"Come in, Scorpius."

Words between Seers are largely formalities. When two powerful, trained Seers are in the same room, the chances are good that both of them have already Seen, well in advance, every outcome of every conversation they could possibly have. What they end up physically speaking to each other is often just going through the motions.

"Let's not go down the rabbit hole that starts with questions about how I'm feeling, shall we, dear?"

There's a chair perfectly positioned by her bed. She's been bedbound for several days now, but the world has not stopped needing its Grand Seer. Lately, heads of state have been making house calls for Divinings, and the chair positioned by the side of the bed is within arm's length of the nightstand, where the Latvian magical president's tea is still sitting, long cooled.

"I'm sorry you're in so much pain," Scorpius says.

"That rather goes with the process of dying," Justine sighs. She pulls her glasses off her nose with trembling fingers and sets them on the binder full of records on her lap. "Still, it won't be much longer now."

Scorpius knows in theory that he could ask her, right now, how she could possibly be handling this so well. Unfortunately, he hasn't quite worked up the nerve.

Justine seems to sense it and smiles at him patiently. "You know why you're here, my darling."

"Even if I can't really understand it," Scorpius admits.

She knows all his questions, of course. Scorpius knows all her answers. They both know that none of them make it clearer for him.

"This is the place that's taught me what destiny means, and then taught me that it doesn't exist," Scorpius says. "But even after Seeing you answer all my question, the one that matters the most doesn't seem to have an answer."

Justine cants her head lightly to one side.

"Why me?" Scorpius asks.

"Darling," Justine says, "was that never one of all our possible conversations? Did I never tell you that you are by a wide margin the most talented student in the Academy?"

Scorpius swallows.

"It's not destiny that it's you," she says, "it's skill, and chance, and effort, like everything else. It's you because you're talented, and the world deserves the best this Academy has to offer."

"You've taught me so much," Scorpius says, voice falling softer. "Justine, I—"

"Dear, I know. If you take me down this road, you know I'm going to cry. Let an old woman pass with some dignity."

Scorpius laughs, though there's not as much joy in it as he'd like. He lowers his eyes to the floor.

"I can't believe how graceful you're managing to be," Scorpius says. "Isn't Seeing your own death traumatizing?"

"Trauma isn't the right word for it," Justine answers, delicately folding her glasses. "Trauma is an artifact of things remembered, and despite the way this academy has been behaving lately, I'm not dead _yet_."

"Still," Scorpius says.

"Still," Justine sighs. "It is something like trauma. But I'm old now. I've had a good life, full of meaning and love. That does lessen the blow."

"I'd go mad if I Saw my own death," Scorpius says. "I don't know how I'd handle it."

Justine stares at him in silence for a while. Her face is inscrutable – mostly impassive, but with traces of a deep sadness.

"You handle it how you can," she says. "I've chosen mostly to keep working, along with spending time with my wife and children. I find it's a nice balance of distraction and contemplation. But every Seer has to go through it eventually."

Scorpius had never thought of it that way, but supposes that it's true.

"Ours is a peculiar pain, isn't it?" Justine turns the glasses over in her frail hands. "Difficult to empathize with, impossible to explain. We take some comfort in each other, but often can't find it with those who matter most to us. Even if they could understand, they wouldn't really want to. Do you understand me, dear?"

Scorpius frowns at her. He tries to Divine the possible outcomes of his thread of conversation – he hadn't Seen her talk about this – but all he comes up with are vague words and sad, downcast eyes.

"Just – one does what one must, I suppose," she says. "One does what one must. You need to sign a few things."

"Yes," Scorpius says, still puzzled, grabbing a quill from the nightstand.

And as Scorpius signs his name across the page that the Grand Seer hands him, she kisses his forehead, and it feels like a benediction.


	14. Hampshire, 2024

On the advice of his father, his boyfriend, multiple professional acquaintances, his increasingly judgmental cat, and several heads of state, Scorpius decides to deal with his pain another way, despite the fact that he knows it won't work.

"I'm still sad," Scorpius says.

"We have fucked eight times," Albus pants, "how are you even still conscious?"

The new method, as he knew it wouldn't, is not working. Scorpius's entire lower back is sore and there's dried come on his stomach, but there is still a deep and terrible part of him that still feels as though it is perpetually on the verge of angry, heartbroken tears.

"Scorp," Al says, "not that I'm complaining about the marathon sex or anything, but didn't you See her death?"

Scorpius sighs. He hates this conversation before it starts. "Of course."

"So why is it now that you're unloading? Surely you've had time to process if you Saw it coming. And I can't just stay up all night fucking away your problems; I have shit to do tomorrow."

Scorpius drops his head to the side and looks at Al, who's looking back at him, and Scorpius wonders if this is fair to either of them. Even without his Eye, Scorpius could read the writing on the wall. Here Scorpius is, mourning the loss of his friend and mentor, among other things, and among Albus's first thoughts is this grief is inconveniencing me.

Is the burden on Scorpius to be more transparent, tell him everything that's made him like this? Should he have to spell it out to Al – I feel like I'm drowning on dry land, I feel like the fragile threads holding me together are fraying – or should Al know him well enough to see it in every desperate, frantic round of sex and every emotion-hitched sobbing moan?

Scorpius doesn't know the answer to those questions, but he does know the answer to the more relevant one – should we still be together? – to which the only answer is clearly no, we should not.

Scorpius knows that Al is hurtling towards ending this relationship. If Scorpius were a harder person, he'd do it himself and cut him off at the pass, but although Scorpius doesn't love Al, he does like him, still, and Scorpius wants to give him the gift of righteous indignation. Scorpius knows it will hurt Al so much less if he's the one that does it.

"I'm sorry the death of my mentor is interfering with your Quidditch match tomorrow," Scorpius says. He should say it with more venom, but he can't muster it.

Al groans loudly, pushes off the bed. "You know I don't mean it like that."

From behind, eighteen-year-old Albus Potter is all lean, sinewy muscle, put into shallow relief from the candles burning on his nearby desk. Scorpius watches the muscles flex and roll beneath the skin as he walks naked toward the bathroom and fills a probably-clean glass with water from the tap.

"I'm just having a hard time empathizing. You've Seen this coming for months. Why now?"

"Because now is when it happened," Scorpius says. "Now is when she's dead."

Albus drains the cup of water as he turns around again. Scorpius's eyes drink in the well-defined lines of his stomach, his chest, his half-hard cock. After nearly four hours of near-nonstop sex and crushing grief, Scorpius can only hope that his mind does not begin to conflate the ideas of mourning and arousal.

"When your grandmother wasted away from Dragon Pox, you saw it coming as much as I did. Why didn't you mourn before the fact?"

Al growls at him. "That's different."

"It's really not."

"Why are you being so combative lately?" Albus snaps. "And so fucking self-destructive, to boot? Perhaps I should be glad for this new development of coping-by-fucking instead of coping-by-drinking-jasmine-oil. It's not goddamn healthy, Scorp."

Scorpius wets his lips, still salty with come. "Because I feel like I'm drowning on dry land," Scorpius says, despite his better judgment. "I feel like the fragile threads holding me together are fraying." Because I Saw far more than her death, Scorpius could add, but does not dare.

Albus groans and collapses back, sliding the cup onto the nightstand beside his bed.

Scorpius feels a painful twinge, but tries not to be hurt by the lack of empathy. After all, Albus has been moving away from him for months now.

Scorpius distracts them both by drawing a finger along the underside of Al's cock, which draws a sharp hiss of breath and a jerk of his hips.

"Scorpius, I swear to Merlin, if we have sex again I'm going to need a prick transplant."

"I think you should ask your prick what it thinks," Scorpius answers. He closes his fingers around the head, and Al groans low.

"Scorpius…"

"Just lie back," Scorpius whispers, rolling from his side onto his knees, and crawling slowly up his body.

After four hours and eight orgasms apiece, at least two of which are still hot and wet deep inside Scorpius, his entire body is pliant and slick. When he straddles Al's hips and rolls backward onto his cock, Scorpius is able to impale himself entirely in one fluid motion.

"Shit," Al says, hands suddenly on Scorpius's hips, fingernails digging into his skin.

Scorpius is still grieving, but the sex lets him forget, even if it's only for as long as Al's cock is in him, or vise-versa. His cock is hot and wide, pressing into all the spots that already ache, rousing a delicious mixture of pleasure and pain.

"Nn," Scorpius says through his teeth, slowly rocking his hips, hands planted on Al's stomach, eyes shut. Al grips his hips like if he lets go they both might slip away in opposite directions, and Scorpius moves quicker, riding the cock and seating it ever deeper into him.

His heart beats quicker, and Scorpius knows it has less to do with the sex. He rocks his hips faster, the aging bedsprings groaning in time, and when Scorpius opens his eyes, the very first thing he sees is Harry Potter.

He's standing just outside the half-open door in the darkened hallway, wearing a bathrobe, glasses half-vanished in his hair, clearly finishing up with whatever policy work had kept him up so late.

And even though Scorpius is riding his son's cock, and even though Harry is very much still married, and even though either one of them could in theory break the eye contact, neither one of them do.

Scorpius knew about this in advance, of course. He Saw it, and came anyway, whether from unchecked self-destruction or hubris or both. He knew that marathon sex would not help him in his grief, but he came anyway, because he knew that this would happen. He knew he'd see Harry through that darkened hallway, naked, debauched, fucked open.

Harry seems to realize that fact a split second later. Scorpius can see the realization on his face.

It draws a low, desperate moan out of him.

"Nnnhaaa," Scorpius groans, hips rolling quicker, head falling back, but eyes still very much on Harry's.

"Scorp," Al mutters under him, voice choked. "Fuck. That's – nngh – so fucking good—"

The headboard of the bed is against the same wall as the door to the hallway, so the only thing Harry can see is Scorpius, hair mussed, chest heaving, one hand moving to close around his own cock. Harry's entire body seems to jerk, just once, at the sight of it.

"Nnnhmmsogood," Scorpius pants, taking the cock in time with the movement of his hand. "So good, so good—"

Al growls, leans up, dives forward and over him. His back to the door, his arms pinning Scorpius to the mattress, his face in Scorpius's hair, Albus starts to fuck him like it's his last chance.

Scorpius doesn't let his eyes move for a second.

Harry swallows visibly. Scorpius wishes he could see the effect it has on him, but he must be satisfied with the expression on his face – desperate, horrified, frantic, and fiercely turned-on all at once. Scorpius opens his legs wider and takes the quickening, deepening thrusts, fingernails digging into Al's shoulders, eyes still locked onto Harry's.

"Harder," Scorpius whispers, and the thrusts come harder. "F-fuck. Fuck. Yes. Hnnnyesyes. Yes."

His aching, battered body is on the verge of orgasm again, and Harry is gripping the wall behind him like it's the only thing holding him up.

"You like that?" Al mumbles into his hair.

"Yes," Scorpius gasps at Harry.

"You want me to come inside you?"

"Yes," Scorpius says again, louder. "Yes, inside, come inside, I want to feel it, yes—"

Harry's shoulders buckle and Al's shoulders still. Scorpius's hand on his cock moves frantically, and a split second after he feels Al's come fill him again for the third – fourth? – time, his own comes splattering across his chest, and in his ecstasy, his eyes fall shut.

And when he opens them again, Harry is gone. And he can hear the sound of the shower from the other side of the hallway, softly hissing through the doorway.

And nothing has changed, but everything has. And Scorpius wonders why he let himself do this, wishing it wasn't the only question his Eye couldn't answer for him.


	15. Steyning, 2023

Scorpius is seventeen when he learns about the life-saving, mind-numbing properties of jasmine oil all over again.

The past few weeks of his life had been spent with a weight in his chest so heavy that he felt as though he could not move from it. With days left before the Grand Seer was going to die, his life had started moving so much faster, and the heavy existential threat was a constant, ceaseless burden. Questions he never though he'd have to ask himself came to him and refused to leave. What was the point of preparing at all? What had been the point of anything he'd already done? How could he ever find joy in anything else, ever again?

Jasmine oil did not answer those questions for him, but it did help distract him from them. He started ordering it in bulk the moment he pulled open the cabinet in his room at the Academy and saw the little violet bottle in the back.

No one else mentioned it. They knew. They understood.

Well, no one else at the Academy. Plenty of people not at the Academy neither knew nor understood, and mentioned it frequently.

"Scorpius, it's Christmas Eve. What are you doing?"

Although their cozy little Steyning home is done up resplendently with glimmering yellow lights and their sitting room is dominated by a seven-foot Christmas tree, his father is understated. Draco Malfoy's idea of festive attire is a bright green tie instead of his usual blue. Anything more obvious would be tacky.

"You're not wearing the sweater," Scorpius says.

"Was I meant to wear it? I thought it was your way of punishing me for all the times I sent you to your room as a child." Father crosses the rug and plucks the bottle of jasmine oil from his fingers. "You've got to stop drinking this stuff. I do not like what it does to you."

"I thought we could match," Scorpius says. He's wearing the sweater he bought for himself, garish and red and far too large, with wide crochet falling down to his knuckles and knees. "You were thinking about wearing it. I Saw more than one instance where you put it on."

"This is what happens when you get drunk off jasmine oil," Father says, putting the bottle just out of reach on the coffee table. "Absolute lunacy. Here."

He produces a gift from somewhere – an enchanted pocket in his robe, maybe – and hands it to Scorpius. It's small and heavy and square with a shiny silver ribbon.

"Are we not waiting?" Scorpius asks, turning it over in his hands.

"It's after midnight, it's close enough. Don't you know what it is already?"

"Jasmine oil," Scorpius says by way of answer. He has vague recollections of Seeing the gift, but they elude him now.

"Open it. Go on."

Scorpius opens it. The buttery-smooth ribbon falls open easily, and the shiny silver paper unfolds around a cardboard box, where inside—

"Oh," Scorpius says, "a pot."

It's small and brown and already filled with dirt.

"Just what I always wanted?"

"It's not just a pot," Father laughs. "It's a Malfoy tradition, one of the only ones worth a damn. When the heir of the estate comes of age, he's given a newly-planted seed of a dragon fruit plant."

"Dragon fruit?" Scorpius turns the pot over in his hands. It's simple terracotta, with a hole in the bottom.

"You might not know this, but the Malfoys made their original fortune by making dragon fruit wine. We've diversified since then, but the tradition of passing down a plant continued, as sort of a symbol. The seed is planted when they come of age, and as it grows, they learn the intricacies of running the estate. Then when it fruits, they take a legal stake in it and help to manage it."

"Wow," Scorpius says. It may be the jasmine oil, but he finds the explanation strangely touching. "Makes me sort of regret giving the sweater."

Father chuckles.

"Thank you, Father," Scorpius continues, smiling. He feels like it's been ages since he's really smiled. "It's lovely. When will it fruit?"

"Varies on the plant, but it should be at least three years."

The smile drops off Scorpius's face at once.

Father frowns. "Scorpius?"

Scorpius looks back at the little brown pot with a different Eye. He's still hazy with jasmine oil, but he fights through it and sees it growing, sees the little green sprout grow higher as Scorpius droops and withers.

"Scorpius," Father says again, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"

"I… I don't think I can…"

Scorpius could tell him of course. There's a not insignificant argument to be made that he should.

But of course, there's also an even more compelling counterargument. What would it accomplish but furious heartbreak and impotent anger? Scorpius can barely handle it, and he can't imagine his father would do any better.

"Scorpius!" His father reaches up and wipes at his cheek with his thumb.

Had he been crying? Damn. Scorpius blinks his eyes several times, then turns away and sets the pot on the coffee table.

"Thank you," Scorpius says. "We should keep it in the greenhouse."

"Scorpius—!"

He can't tell him. He can't do that to him. Not when it won't matter. He rises to his feet, swaying and wobbling. Father stands to help him, but Scorpius shrugs out of his grasp.

"Happy Christmas," he says, and leaves the room, because he can't bear thinking about it a moment longer.


	16. London, 2026

"I heard about what happened."

It might be the wine, but Scorpius is already bored with this conversation. He was bored of it before it happened. He's been bored by everything and at every point when he isn't broken down into tears.

"Is this the trauma?" Harry asks.

Scorpius looks up over his dragon fruit wine. Harry Potter, the Minister of Magic, the Boy Who Lived and Man Who Thrived, is standing just inside his bedroom with his hands in his pockets, looking guilty. Scorpius drains his wine.

"I don't blame you," Harry says. "Al's quite a catch. He still cares about you, he just…"

Scorpius is perfectly content to let Harry talk himself into a corner here.

"I feel as though I should apologize on his behalf, but—"

"Neither one of you have anything to apologize to me for," Scorpius says. He wants to refill his glass of wine, but not nearly so badly as he wants to stay in his armchair by the fireplace. "He ended our relationship for perfectly valid reasons. He'll find someone else in time, someone who can be what he needs. Give you grandkids."

Harry's face is impassive. "And you?"

Scorpius decides that he needs more wine than he needs to remain immobile. He rises up from the leather chair and pours another glass from the decanter. Everything in the Minister's private quarters is more expensive than Harry would ever require and more tasteful than he could ever really appreciate.

"There is this one guy," Scorpius says, "but he's married."

"You deserve someone better than me," Harry answers sedately.

"Yeah, I could probably upgrade from the leader of the Magical Word." Scorpius takes a large mouthful of his newly refilled wine glass. Harry plucks it from his hand mid-sip and sets it back down on the wine cart.

"I'm serious," Harry says. "You're incredible, Scorpius. You're smart and you're compassionate and you're gorgeous and you deserve someone. And I'm sure you'll find him in time."

Scorpius laughs, not because it's funny, but because anyone being optimistic about his future these days always hits him like vicious irony, and laughter feels like the only appropriate way to respond.

"I'm not my father, though, am I?"

Harry's face falls. "Scorpius…"

"I told him about us," Scorpius says. "I told him we're fucking."

Scorpius uses that moment of stunned, horrified silence that follows to pick up his glass of wine again. All the color on Harry's face evaporates.

"What," he says. Then, "What?"

"I told him months ago, actually," Scorpius continues.

"Oh, God," Harry says, looking nauseous.

"Funny," Scorpius says, even though it isn't, "that was his reaction, too."

Harry pushes both hands through his hair, turns away. "Oh, God," he says again, "he'll never forgive me."

Scorpius considers saying something, but knows better. He takes a sip of wine just before Harry rounds on him again, angry.

"Why the hell would you tell him?"

What a question.

Because he's my father, Scorpius could say but doesn't, because he's never hidden anything from him and he'd never want to. It would only escalate the anger, of course, and convince Harry that he has doomed something that's not even real yet.

Because he'll forgive you for it in time, Scorpius could say but dares not, because eventually he'll understand that there was never any point in hating Harry for something that is fundamentally not his fault, and because he'll slowly realize the underlying truth of why it started at all.

Because I love you and want you to be happy, Scorpius could say, wants to say, but is too frightened to, because Scorpius knows that it's the only way Harry ever can be, and Scorpius can't do it for him.

In the end, Scorpius says nothing at all. He lets the silence linger, lets Harry dangle on the edge of frantic desperation just long enough before the door opens.

Harry turns, then takes in a sharp breath. Scorpius doesn't need to look to know that his father is standing in the doorway, stony-faced.

"Draco," Harry says breathlessly.

"Minister," his father answers, voice icy, a jacket over one arm. "I'm here for my son. We're going to dinner."

"I – that…"

Scorpius finishes off his wine just as Harry looks down at him desperately. He sets down the glass and turns around.

"Good to see you've already gotten him drunk," Draco answers sharply.

"You're giving him far too much credit," Scorpius says. "I most decidedly got myself drunk."

"Draco…"

"Thank you, Minister," Father says harshly, ending the conversation swiftly and succinctly. Within moments the door is closed and the Ministerial Guard is making note of their departure from his office.

"I hate that you still do this," Father snarls.

"I hate that you hate it," Scorpius says.

"What am I supposed to feel about it?" he snaps, gripping the jacket over his arm more tightly. "About the Minister of Magic – and my son—"

"Feel about it however you want," Scorpius says, "I just hope you know why you feel it."

Father narrows his eyes, and Scorpius doesn't bother meeting them. He knows the words will churn in his head. He has Seen it years in advance. He'll pick apart all his rationalizations one by one, until he's only left with the ugly and inconvenient truth.

And then, slowly, things will change, and Scorpius is glad that he'll never have to see it. He does not think he could bear it.


	17. Calais, 2026

Scorpius has circled the date four weeks from now with red ink. He's not sure why red, but he has a few ideas.

"Anika?" he calls through his office door.

His secretary Anika, like all the other functionaries at the Academy, is not a Seer, so it takes her a moment to poke her head in through the large, heavy mahogany door of his office.

"Grand Seer?"

"Could you please let Madeline in when she arrives?"

Anika nods. The staff around the Academy don't bother keeping appointments between Seers; they all already know when and where they'll meet. She jots down a quick note to herself on the clipboard in one hand.

She lingers in the doorway, however, after the fact, and worries her lower lip. Scorpius sighs, and he looks out the large window behind his desk and he waits.

"Grand Seer," she says again, hesitantly, "I've heard…"

Scorpius keeps waiting, more out of politeness than anything else. He knows how those without Sight can be irritated by those with it.

"Is it true, what they're saying about your meetings with Madeline?" she asks. "Are you…?"

Scorpius spins his desk chair around so he's facing Anika. Her long black hair is pulled into a tight bun, her glasses slipping down her nose.

"It's true," Scorpius answers neutrally.

Anika is thunderstruck. She stares at him in heartbroken silence for a moment, then quickly averts her eyes down to the parquet floor.

"I… I can't believe it," she says. "You're only… it's been…"

"I know," Scorpius says. "Trust me, I know."

"I'm sorry," she continues, "I shouldn't have brought it up."

"It's fine."

Anika moves back toward the door like she wants to leave, but of course she stops halfway out. Scorpius keeps waiting.

"So you Saw…?"

"Yes," Scorpius answers. "Years ago."

"Merlin," she says, hugging the clipboard to her chest. "How on earth have you made it this far?"

Scorpius knew this question was coming, of course, but somehow he still isn't ready for it. He knows by the tone of his secretary's voice that the question had been half rhetorical anyway, and she would not be offended if he didn't answer. Still, he feels as though he should, if only because he feels like he needs an answer to it.

"I'm not sure, to be honest," Scorpius says. "Some half-reckless, half-calculated combination of indulgence and self-pity, I suppose."

Anika keeps listening, so Scorpius keeps talking.

"I've done some things I'm not proud of because I knew I'd never have a chance at them again. I've done some things I can never say because I was trying to protect the people I care for. I've gotten drunk, had lots of sex, fallen in love, had my heart broken."

Anika looks like she's about to cry, bless her. Scorpius has Seen versions of his conversation where she stumbles over her own words confessing how much she admires him and always has, and he knows how much these next few months will kill her. But he's also Seen her come through it all the stronger, and he takes solace in that.

"I've caused some heartache, I suppose, though I like to think I've done what I can to minimize it. I've tried to find some balance between taking what little opportunity I have left to indulge in my own happiness while protecting my loved ones from harm. I don't know that I did it perfectly, but I…"

Scorpius's voice hitches, and emotion knots in his throat. Damn. He'd really been hoping he could get through this without crying. He's done so much of it already.

"In my efforts to minimize the pain of those around me, I've forced myself to go through it alone," Scorpius says, "and if it seems like I'm unduly offloading three years worth of emotional baggage on my secretary, it's only because being alone in it has left me so scared."

"Scorpius," Anika says, voice wavering.

"I'm so _scared_ ," Scorpius says again, wiping harshly at his eyes with his wrist. "I've read philosophy and debated the concept of the soul and gone to church and none of it has helped. I'm only twenty, I'd thought…"

He turns his chair back toward the window and tries to pretend that he's not crying for Anika's sake.

"Grand Seer, I…"

"Could you go fetch Madeline?" he asks. "I'd like to get the meeting over with now."

She hesitates a while longer, on the edge of some assumed responsibility to say something, do something, comfort Scorpius somehow. It is twenty long seconds before Scorpius hears the heavy wooden door close.

He bends forward over his knees and covers his face with both hands, alone again, by deliberate choice but somehow not willingly. And even though he thought he ran out of tears months ago, his shoulders start to shake, and Scorpius sobs into his open hands, desperately trying to collect himself before Madeline arrives.


	18. Steyning, 2023 II

The first time he Sees it, he is seventeen, and it jolts him awake from a sleepy delirium.

It hits him in waves. First, denial. He's misinterpreted this, surely. When it comes to time, certainties are so rare. The nature of time is chaotic, and there are always ways to change things.

 _Scorpius, get out of there now!_

He could stay out of the public eye. But that would only bring the rest of the world to him.

He could double up on security. But that would just redouble the efforts against him, costing more lives.

He could warn the Magical International Police, but a short-term victory would only stoke the flames of extremism, recruiting more to the cause, bringing further destruction.

He could resign, but without the Grand Seer in office, magical governments will be left handicapped, susceptible in the extreme to the riots, the violence, the anger.

He could kill himself, but then what is even the difference?

 _Scorpius, the separatists are planning an attack on the Senate, you have to leave now, before—_

After denial comes fear, slow and inexorable like a glacier. Is this happening? This is happening. He can see all the radiations in his head like threads of a spiderweb, branching and meeting and ultimately joining in the center, at one single point of true, clear inevitability.

 _AVADA KEDAVRA!_

Each time it replays in his head, he feels a lance of nausea. He can See it, hitting his body in a burst of green light, See himself dropping onto polished marble, See them dragging his body out of the Senate to be ripped apart and burned in front of the mobs of Krakow—

Scorpius crashes through the door to the bathroom and vomits in some frenzied combination of fear and visceral disgust. They'll never find his body. Father will have nothing left to bury.

After fear, there's a deep, profound, all-encompassing, desperate sadness. He collapses on the tiled floor of the bathroom, stomach churning in fear, head heavy with grief. _No, no, no, please no, please no._ The walls close in. He'll never fall in love. He'll never raise children. He's going to die at twenty, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Sadness gives way to terrifying numbness, then back to sadness again. It vacillates like the tide, leaving him by turns sobbing and stony still hour to hour on the floor of his bathroom, until strange angles of sunlight slice down through the window, until his stomach aches with hunger.

 _What the hell do you mean, nothing to be done? Fuck you, nothing to be done! Scorpius, I'm not going to let this happen!_

Al can and would walk through fire for him, right into the violent epicenter of the far-right stronghold in Krakow's underground, even if it meant dying himself. He can't tell Al.

 _I'll pull strings! I have connections, if we can't bring them down the proper way I'll call in my favors with every nuclear power in the world to stop them!_

Father would only descend. He is open to reason, but reason has its limits when a father needs to protect his child. He'd blackmail every head of state alive until it landed him in prison or worse. He can't tell Father.

 _So we take the pressure off you, then. I'll be the surrogate for everything you need to say, I'll take your positions for you, I'll make myself the target._

Harry would martyr himself again, this time without the hope of resurrection. But in the end it would be his life for Scorpius's. He can't tell Harry.

By dawn, sprawled on the floor of the bathroom, Scorpius realizes that he is alone, that he will be alone, that he must be alone. He's going to die. He's going to die alone and scared.

What the hell is he supposed to do? How is he supposed to go on? How is he meant to live these last three years of his life with this shadow in the back of his mind, the unspoken words in every conversation? How is he supposed to do this alone? What's the point of doing anything? What was the point of having done anything at all?

When Madeline finds him on the floor of the bathroom, she does not ask why he is there, and Scorpius does not ask why she came to look for him here in Steyning. She shoulders his weight back into the bedroom, lies him down on the bed.

"I'm sorry," she says.

Scorpius doesn't answer.

A beat of silence. She fishes a small phial of jasmine oil from her robe pocket and hands it to him.

"This will not help," she says in response to a question Scorpius does not but could have asked. "But nothing really will."

Scorpius lifts his hand to take it. His eyes burn harder.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asks her, voice cracking.

"Whatever you can," she answers.


End file.
